


never let me go

by nebulousviolet



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Multi, timeline jumps uwu, tw for abusive relationship, tw racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-23 01:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: “Maia,” she says, and Maia hates how Lily says her name, hates how Lily makes it a hook, a lure, a life preserver in an ocean with no shore.Lily, Maia will admit to thinking, would’ve made a fucking nightmare of a werewolf.-(character study)





	never let me go

**Author's Note:**

> hi shitstirrers...I've been brooding over maia lately so have this angstfest lol  
> tv-only fans: this aint for u

It’s 2009 and Maia Roberts sits in the Hunter’s Moon, nursing a shot of tequila. She can’t bring herself to drink it because it’s the same crappy brand that Jordan used to drink and, ah,  _ fuck _ , she’s thinking about him again. Jordan is a double edged sword, even in death. Figures, she thinks. Everything he’s ever done has always figured. 

These days, she tries to stay busy  _ and _ positive, which is easier said than done when you’re just gone nineteen and trying to get your GED online while attempting to console your only other diplomatic ally over the death of the guy who tried to kill your ex-kind-of-boyfriend at least once. But  _ that’s _ easier than thinking about her ex-kind-of-boyfriend at all, which is the alternative option, so Maia takes the high road. She’s always taken the high road. That’s how she got here in the first place.

“Tough night?” Freaky Pete asks when she picks up the shot and puts it down again, and she wants to say,  _ tough year; tough life.  _ It’s the kind of comment that Lily would appreciate, and the fact that Maia  _ knows  _ this by now sort of horrifies her seventeen-year-old self. Freaky Pete, however, is most certainly not Lily, so she says, “Kind of,” instead, because that’s as far as she can admit anything these days. Isabelle, the only other woman Maia has met who can rival her at suppressing negative emotion, would be proud. Alec probably would’ve been too, when they first met. 

Alec has changed, though, because eighteen-year-old Alec would never show up at the Hunter’s Moon. And then Maia does a double take, because  _ Alec is showing up at the Hunter’s Moon. _

“Mai,” he says, not Maia, because he knows it irritates her into responding. “Lily said she’s been trying to call you, but you didn’t pick up.”

_ And you knew I would be here, because this is the one place so far within werewolf territory that even Lily won’t trespass,  _ she thinks, but she doesn’t say it. The problem isn’t that Maia dislikes Lily. In fact, the problem would be solved if she did.

Maia thinks of Jordan dying in her arms, of Simon’s blank face as she introduced herself at Jocelyn’s wedding, of the boys in her New Jersey suburb who whistled at her on the street and called her names that the white girls never had to endure. Men have only ever brought her pain. It makes too much sense that, at some point, she’d be attracted to someone who isn’t one.

“I’m fine,” Maia says dully, and Alec takes the shot from the table and downs it himself. She knows he knows what brand it is, because Isabelle once showed up at Magnus’s apartment reeking of the stuff, and also because Maia has told him way too much. 

“Are you?” he asks.

Maia always wanted a brother who wasn’t  _ Daniel.  _ She just never expected it to be Alec.

 

Alec goes to people who need someone, she knows that much. Jace needed someone, and Isabelle needed someone, and so did Lily. Maia had gotten used to not needing until Alec showed up. Maia sometimes hates that he showed up in the first place.

 

“What do you think?” she returns, and Alec doesn’t smile like Bat or Simon would.  _ Don’t think about Simon. Just don’t. _

“You remind me of someone,” he says.

“Who?” she asks, even though she can guess.

“My sister.”

 

If you’d asked seventeen-year-old Maia whether she thought she was anything like Isabelle, she would’ve laughed you out of the room.

Nobody’s laughing now.

 

*

 

“Why won’t you believe me?” Maia demands, age eleven and desperate. She stopped begging her parents to notice Daniel’s cruelty towards her a long time ago, but this time she thinks they can’t ignore it. There is bleach in Maia’s shampoo - the special kind that her Aunt Celia took her to buy because Mom’s Wash ‘N’ Go doesn’t work on black hair. The damage is so bad that Maia’s curls, which had reached almost down to her waist when stretched out, have had to be cruelly shorn to just below her jaw. “Mom! Mommy!”

Her mother won’t look at her. Maia knows why, and yet hatred curls in her stomach like sour milk.  _ Because he’s prettier than me. Because he’s whiter than me. Because- _

“Because you’re being ridiculous,” she says firmly. “In fact, you’re lucky Daniel was there to help you wash it out.”

_ Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. _

 

Maia has grown to hate that word.

 

*

 

It’s raining in the East Village, which doesn’t really make such a change, but Maia can’t help but feel disappointed. Pathetic fallacy, her eighth grade English teacher would say. A sign of bad things to come.

“You’ve gotta try the borscht,” Simon gushes, and she glances down from the sky and back at him, smiling at the look on his face. It’s a dreamy, almost wistful expression -  _ of course,  _ Maia realises,  _ he’s a vampire, he can’t eat it anymore.  _ It’s so easy to forget, with the Daylighter business. In a way, Simon being such an anomaly makes him the most normal part of Maia’s life. “You’ll love it, honest.”

“You said that about those tofu dogs,” she recalls, wincing at the memory. She’s never tasted anything so bland. “Is this more white people food?”

“It’s Ukrainian,” Simon rolls his eyes as he opens the door for her, and Maia grins at him over her shoulder.

“Yeah, so it is!”

The worst thing about Simon is that he’s like all the good parts of Jordan times ten. She’s been in his bedroom -  _ don’t tell Isabelle,  _ he’d said, and she’d laughed as he added,  _ no, really, she keeps trying to get in here and it scares me  _ \- and she knows that he likes all the same dumb bands that he does, plays all the same video games, even takes the same electives. If they met, they’d probably get on well.

But this line of thinking violates Maia’s number one rule -  _ don’t think about Jordan.  _ She takes a seat by the window and examines one of the menus on the table as Simon comes to sit opposite.

“Ew,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Beetroot.”

“Clary said that, too,” Simon recalls, and Maia squishes down the weird feeling that comes with the fondness that Simon addresses his best friend with. Maia likes Clary. She’s funny and talented and Luke’s soon-to-be stepdaughter, and  _ Simon’s best friend.  _ And also Simon’s ex-girlfriend. There is that. But that’s fine, because Simon and Maia aren’t dating. Officially. Maia wouldn’t mind dating him, if he asked, but he hasn’t, so-

“Really?” Maia asks, looking up at him through her lashes. He’s still wearing his glasses, only without the lenses. It almost works for him, in a dorky way. “I would’ve thought this kind of place would’ve been right up her alley.”

“She used to eat off the kids menu at almost every restaurant we went to until she was fifteen because one, she could get away with it, and two, it was the only way she could get chicken tenders,” Simon says, brushing his bangs back thoughtfully. He’s growing those out, too, and  _ that’s  _ just like Jordan as well, come to think of it. “But I’m sure she’ll be pleased to know that you think she’s capable of eating beetroot.”

It’d be so easy to tell him about Jordan. Simon has never asked about her past. It’s her favourite thing about him; in return, Maia tries not to get too involved with his mom or his sister or his schoolfriends. Compartmentalising is the new normal. Maybe it shouldn’t be.

_ Not now,  _ she thinks.  _ Not yet.  _

“Make sure to pass that on from me,” she says. “Now, can I get a coffee, or what?”

 

*

 

“Magnus got a kid,” Lily announces, when Maia meets her at a sushi bar downtown. It’s the one food that Lily has practiced eating enough for her to keep down, and Maia likes this place, likes the glistening lights and the feeling of not being real. It’s not like she has an alternative; Lily knows New York better than she does, anyway. In fact, Maia is sort of terrified by what Lily knows.

“A kid kid, or, like, a goat?” Maia presses, ignoring the strange glance another patron shoots their way. They’ve got to be from out of town, because Maia hears stranger conversations than this on the subway. Lily shoots her a look that suggests she’s being very dense.

“Why would Magnus get a goat?” she asks.

“Why would Magnus get a kid?” Maia demands, and then lowers her voice. “How is Alec dealing?”

Lily’s eyes light up at the mention of Alec, as they always do. If Alec is the older brother that Maia so desperately wished for in place of her own, then he’s Lily’s Raphael 2.0. Maia has always been of the opinion that the world didn’t really need a Raphael 1.0 in the first place, but it’s best not to mention that in front of Lily.

But one look at Maia’s list of ex-boyfriends and she’s hardly in a place to judge.

“He’s great,” Lily says brightly, and moves the cross that hangs on the chain looped around her pale neck with absent fingers. Maia missed two years of high school, but she remembers this: in the French Revolution, they used to loop red ribbons around the necks of the aristocrats who survived. She can’t help but wonder if perhaps Lily is doing the same thing. “A real natural.”

Maia thinks of what they told her when she fell in with the downtown pack; lycanthropy is almost always passed from a pregnant woman to her unborn child. Maia had thought that seventeen ( _ just)  _ was still too young to have her life ruined. Maia had decided that she’d never wanted children, anyway. And even if that wasn’t the case, Maia is still terrified of turning out like her parents. Like her parents, who haven’t seen her in almost three years, and who haven’t called.

The narrowing of Lily’s eyes feels like a stiletto knife being placed in between Maia’s ribs -  _ no,  _ it feels like the pinch of Daniel’s sharp fingers under her arm. Lily is pretty. Lily is very pretty. Lily can rip a man’s throat out in fifteen seconds,  _ not to brag. _

“Maia,” she says, and Maia hates how Lily says her name, hates how Lily makes it a hook, a lure, a life preserver in an ocean with no shore. 

 

Lily, Maia will admit to thinking, would’ve made a fucking nightmare of a werewolf.

 

“Maia,” she says again, and her eyes are the colour of pitch when Maia looks at her. She can’t decide if they’re forgiving or not. “It gets easier.”

She’s really goddamn tired of people saying that. She’s really goddamn tired of  _ Lily  _ saying that. “Tell me something new,” Maia responds, and touches the side of her throat almost absently. If she concentrates hard enough, she can still feel the stickiness of her own blood on her fingertips.

 

*

 

“Raphael’s dead,” Maia blurts out when Lily finally picks up the phone. There’s probably better ways to phrase that, but she’s in the Consul’s office, and Clary is having a breakdown outside. Maia can’t really afford to be tactful right now.

There’s a retching sound, and then a rustle.

“It’s Elliott,” a voice says. “Is it true?”

“Why would I lie?” Maia asks. “Is she really taking it that badly?”

There’s a brief silence, and then Elliott says, as sober as she’s ever heard him, “The thing with Lily is that she never admits things to herself until it’s too late.”

 

That’s another thing they have in common, then, Maia supposes.

 

*

 

“I knew you’d say that,” Maia says to Alec in 2009 at the Hunter’s Moon. “I hate your sister.”

“Okay,” Alec says agreeably, his hair as black as an oil slick under the dim lighting. She half-expects him to pick a fight with her, but she’s not surprised when he doesn’t. That’s Jace’s thing, after all. Maybe it’s a prerequisite to be the complete opposite of your  _ parabatai,  _ because Alec has never put Maia on edge like Jace has. Like he sometimes still does. He might be all sunshine and rainbows now that Clary isn’t his sister anymore, but Maia has a long memory. It’s hard to forget the night where he stood in this same bar with gasoline slicking his bones and his words coiling themselves into lit splints. 

“I hate her,” Maia continues, “because of Simon.”

“That’s not true,” Alec disagrees. “Don’t give the mundane that much credit.”

“The mundane?” Maia snorts. “What are you, Valentine Morgenstern?”

He ignores her, like she knew he would. “Tell me why you really hate Isabelle.”

Maia leans back on the barstool to avoid looking at him. Lily once said to her that Alec’s guilt trips were all in the eyes, and Maia’s not big on eye-contact for a variety of reasons, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. “Alright,” she sighs. “I hate Isabelle because sometimes her life seems like a twisted version of mine. Except my older brother definitely didn’t go around helping the needy.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Alec says.

“Good,” Maia closes her eyes and tries to blot the rest of the bar out. Her head is beginning to ache. “It means it worked.”

 

*

 

Let’s tell it like the story it feels like instead of the life that Maia’s actually living: when she’s with Jordan, she doesn’t look at other girls, because there is Jordan to think of. She doesn’t look at boys, because there is Jordan to think of. She doesn’t remember selling him the real estate in her head, but he’s there anyway. 

She thinks maybe he’ll have to die to finally give it up. She’s wrong.

 

*

 

It’s April 2008 and Isabelle Lightwood wants to talk to her. Six months ago, this would not have been a big deal, but then, six months ago, Simon remembered her.

They meet at some coffee shop that Simon supposedly frequents - Maia thinks about warning Isabelle about the unwiseness of this decision, but doesn’t - and she looks just the same as Maia remembers. It isn’t that she’d fallen out of touch with Isabelle by choice, it’s just-

Well, it’s hard. It’s hard, because Isabelle is maybe the only other person who’s feeling what she’s feeling, except only worse on her part. There’s Clary, of course, but Maia has to pretend with Clary. Her mom is still marrying Luke, after all. However, Maia does not have to pretend with Isabelle, and that’s why she keeps putting off replying to her texts and voicemails and calls. Until now, she supposes.

“I saw him on the subway,” Isabelle says without pretense. Her eyes are red raw, like she’s been crying, but she otherwise looks exactly like how Maia remembers. One long braid contains her spill of ink-coloured hair, and she’s wearing a short leather skirt and a plunging red blouse. It seems like she’s using the gaudiness of her outfit to distract from the clear anguish written all over her features. “He looked at me, just like all the other mundies did. I don’t even know why it upsets me so much.”

It’s not Maia’s fault that Isabelle was taught nearly every kind of boy was poison. For Maia, it was just the one. She drank the whole bottle anyway.

 

And look where that got her.

 

“It’s like when Max died, but worse,” Isabelle mumbles, almost inaudible. A waitress gives her a concerned glance. “I keep making stupid bargains with myself, like if I remember the plot of every Star Wars movie then he’ll remember me, or if I hit every target in practice then I’ll wake up and he’ll be there. There’s no such thing as a funeral for the living.”

“Maybe he’s happier without us,” Maia suggests, and Isabelle leans her head against the oversized armchair she’s sitting in. Her gaze is infinite, and Maia notices for the first time that her forearms are raw and bloody, like she’s been clawing at them.

“Don’t you get it?” she whispers. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

 

*

 

According to Alec, vampires don’t sense temperature.

It’s the same with hypothermia. Your body tricks you into thinking you’re warm instead of freezing cold, and then you just lay down and die. Apparently, you don’t even realise it’s happening.

When Lily kisses her, Maia remembers this fact. When Lily kisses her, Maia thinks she might be dying.

“Jesus, Lily,” Magnus says when Lily pulls away, smug as ever even with her vermilion lipstick smeared around the corners of her mouth. “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

“Life’s short,” Maia responds, and kisses Lily back. Her arms feel like cool marble in the sticky summer night. They hold both of them up, together.

 

*

 

When Maia opens her eyes, Alec is examining her. His expression is unreadable. That’s the thing, with Alec. He’s difficult to crack. A twisted part of her thinks that it only seems that way because she’d not exactly used to kindness from handsome men, but she pushes it down. She already feels like shit as it is.

“My brother died,” she confesses. “I was happy. I was so, so happy. And then God sent me Jordan.”

“You don’t hate him,” Alec says slowly, like he’s pulling a piece of taffy, and Maia isn’t sure if he’s talking about Jordan or Daniel or both.

“Everything would be so much easier if I did,” she answers the unspoken question, and damn it, she’s not sure who she’s talking about, either. 

She will not cry. Maia hates crying, especially over men.

“I’ll call Lily back,” she promises almost hysterically. “I’ll-”

“Hey,” Alec soothes. He’s a fixer, after all. This is what he’d good at. “Maia, it’s okay. Just breathe.”

 

_ Just breathe.  _ She pushes Jordan and Simon out of her mind.  _ Just breathe. _

 

She orders another drink. Alec watches her with big blue eyes.

“Alright,” she says. “Put it on my tab. Let’s go.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> pls comment if u enjoyed <3


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